In the past four decades, the career of Mike Nichols has gone through its share of ups and downs. Nichols made his name as a director with a number of popular, acclaimed films, but he also has several inexplicable films to answer for. I might have spotlighted 2000’s awful What Planet Are You From? had Nathan Rabin not done so already. But Regarding Henry is a more than acceptable alternative, with the bonus of demonstrating the worst tendencies of Nichols’ later films.
Nichols has long been one of Hollywood’s go-to filmmakers for classy star vehicles, particularly “dramedies” geared to adults like Working Girl, Postcards From the Edge, and Primary Colors. But much of Nichols’ enduring critical rep still rests on his seminal early classics Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Graduate, and (my favorite) Carnal Knowledge. Without these films, Nichols would be little more than a slightly more upscale version of Lasse Hallstrom.
In short, Regarding Henry is a pandering comfort blanket of a movie that’s smothering instead of cozy. It’s also a textbook White-Collar Guilt movie, in which an affluent protagonist (in this case, a lawyer played by Harrison Ford) suffers a tragedy (here, a shooting that causes memory loss) that forces him into a crisis of conscience that makes him a better person. Movies like this invariably divide people into two categories- morally-compromised rich people, and salt-of-the-earth poor people. This dichotomy feels like a cynical attempt on Hollywood’s part to flatter the less financially successful viewers while allowing the more privileged to vicariously experience the hero’s awakening before speeding home in their BMWs.
Regarding Henry, based on the first produced screenplay by Jeffrey (later J.J.) Abrams, contains no surprises on this front. In
fact, the film is so intent on concentrating on the psychological stuff that it skates right through the physical healing process. Once Henry learns to walk and talk (his first word is “Ritz,” the significance of which feels like a bad joke) again, he’s soon ready to go home. After he arrives back in his expensive apartment, everything happens as it should- his once-rocky marriage is quickly mended, he becomes a better father, all that. Heck, the movie begins with Henry successfully smooth-talking a jury in defense of a hospital that’s being sued by a dying old man. If you can’t see where that subplot is going, then congratulations, because you’ve finally seen your first movie! Too bad it’s this one. And let’s not get started on the film’s simplistic view of minorities, especially Bill Nunn’s ever-cheerful Magical Black Man caregiver.
After his shooting, Henry’s memory loss causes him to regress to a state of childlike naïveté. But while Ford is about the
500th actor one would cast to play childlike, the movie itself does a bang-up job of regressing to a grade-school mindset. Regarding Henry is a movie in which the hero’s problems are solved by getting a puppy, moving to a new house, quitting his job, and pulling his daughter out of her exclusive boarding school. Sure, the money won’t hold out forever, but you don’t think about those things when you’re young, do you? The way Regarding Henry paints it, it’s a wonder more rich people haven’t tried to put themselves through the profound spiritual experience of getting shot in the head.
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